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Dr. Steadman's Interview
May 2008
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Richard Steadman, M.D.
Steadman Hawkins Clinic in Vail, Co.
181 West Meadow Drive, Suite 400
Vail, CO 81657
Phone: (970) 476-1100
Fax: (970) 479-5835
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Dr.
Steadman's Medical Profile
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The Steadman-Hawkins Clinic has become one of the best sports
injury treatment centers in the world. Through research, Dr. Richard
Steadman and the staff at the Steadman Hawkins Research Foundation
have solved a wide array of orthopaedic problems related to the
knee. . Professional athletes from all sports, in particular
European soccer stars, have been coming to the Vail clinic for
treatment of their severe knee injuries.
In early January of 2000, one of England's top scoring strikers,
Newcastle's United's Alan Shearer, was among the first European
soccer stars to take the trip across the pond for a visit with Dr.
Steadman. Shearer's career looked to be in shambles due to a major
knee injury that seemed to be career ending. A severe ligament
injury to the right knee, complicated by tendonitis persuaded
Shearer that a trip to Vail was in order.
The Newcastle United Football Club decided to immediately fly
Shearer to Colorado to see Dr. Steadman. The news that he was going
to need surgery and a minimum of three to four months on the
sideline quickly traveled back to Europe, baffling many FA Premiere
soccer fans, who assumed that Shearer's career was over and all that
remained was the retirement announcement. Although there was much
speculation about Shearer's prospects, both he and Steadman remained
firm that he would play again.
"I know that a few doom-mongers have been trying to suggest that
this is the end of Alan Shearer's career" said Shearer. "Well,
they're wrong, very wrong. The top specialist in the world (Dr.
Steadman) says there are no complications, and when I come back -
not if - there won't be any problem. Anyone who says otherwise is
believing neither Dr Steadman nor me." (1)
After his recovery, Shearer continued playing for Newcastle United
well into the 2006 season. He remained one of the most feared
strikers in English Premiership football and even banged home a
career high of five goals in a 2006 match against Sheffield
Wednesday*. Late in 2006, Shearer scored his 201st goal for
Newcastle, making him the top scorer in the club's history. * this
occurred in 1999!!!
Dr. Steadman successfully repaired Shearer's knee and Europe took
notice. The unexpected return of Shearer to European premiership
glory proved to professional soccer players that one knee injury did
not necessarily mean the end of a career. Shortly after operating on
Shearer, Dr. Steadman was asked to evaluate a similar knee injury to
Liverpool's Craig Bellamy, another European superstar. "All I want
to do is to get back home and start my rehabilitation, and when I do
get to return I will be stronger and fitter and with two good
knees," said Bellamy after his surgery. "Dr Steadman is a fantastic
surgeon and, like Alan [Shearer], I have complete faith in him and I
know everything will again be fine (2). Bellamy successfully
recovered from his knee injury and continues to play for Liverpool
to this day. He is one of the top strikers in European soccer and
shows few signs of slowing down.
An influx of major European superstars has visited with Dr. Steadman
after the successful reconstructive surgery for Shearer and Bellamy.
Steadman has treated famous footballers like the A.C. Milan striker
Ronaldo, Allesandro Del Piero of Juventus in Italy, and Leonardo of
the Dutch team Ajax.
Recently, Newcastle United's Michael Owen, one of the world's best
footballers, visited The Steadman-Hawkins Clinic in Vail to be
treated by Dr. Steadman. Owen, who was only 26 when he injured his
knee in 2006, has had problems very similar to Shearer and Bellamy.
"The doctor (Dr. Richard Steadman) comes with a great reputation.
I've seen him a few times already and I know I'm in safe hands",
said Owen. "We had a look at the pros and cons for different
surgeons. There are a lot of good ones here in England, and we
weighed up that traveling to America and staying out there and
flying back would be worthwhile. Dr. Steadman has so much experience
- Alan Shearer speaks very highly of him. I've spoken to everyone,
and we came to the conclusion that Richard Steadman was the best man
for the job." (3) Although there are many knee surgeons in the
world, it appears the European soccer community has come to rely
upon Dr. Steadman.
Steadman's reputation among elite athletes is not limited to
European footballers. His expertise is in demand for professional
ski racers, golfers, and NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL athletes. In the
opinion of Michael Owen, and many others around the world, Richard
Steadman was the best man for the job.
Dr. Richard Steadman: an active legacy
Link:
http://www.realvail.com/RealLives/171/Dr-Richard-Steadman-an-active-legacy.html
Vail's top doc wants to be known for far more than salvaging the careers of
superstar athletes
By David O. Williams
January 22, 2008 — Dr. Richard Steadman’s skills with a scalpel have earned
Olympic medals, NFL sack records, Super Bowl rings and countless world
championships.
But the Vail Valley’s own “surgeon of the stars” would much rather be remembered
for something other than salvaging or prolonging the careers of skiers such as
Phil Mahre, Picabo Street and Bode Miller and football greats such as Joe
Montana, John Elway and Bruce Smith. “Steady,” as a bevy of hall-of-fame
athletes call him, would rather be known as the doc who kept millions of weekend
warriors out on the links or on the slopes late into life.
“I’d much prefer to be known for figuring out a procedure that helps people with
arthritis, or gets people back in action that have had cartilage injuries, or an
easier way to recover from an ACL surgery,” says Steadman. “I’d rather be known
for that than the fact that I’ve treated some famous athletes. I’m proud to have
treated them, and I’m honored that they came to me, but if I want to be known
for something, I’d rather be known for these things that affect everybody, me
included.”
One of the key factors that led Steadman to relocate his practice to Vail from
the Lake Tahoe area in 1990 was the degree to which the community embraced his
nonprofit scientific research and education efforts. The Steadman Hawkins
Research Foundation (formerly known as the Steadman Hawkins Sports Medicine
Foundation) has tracked more than 12,000 knee surgeries performed by the
Steadman Hawkins Clinic – one of the largest orthopedic databases in the world –
and has meticulously conducted research validating a slew of successful
breakthrough surgical techniques.
One of them, “healing response,” got Miller back on skis and in double
silver-medal-winning form at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City less
than a year after completely tearing his ACL at a World Cup race in Austria.
Healing response, an arthroscopic technique that involves making holes in the
bone so a blood clot forms and reattaches the anterior cruciate ligament, is an
offshoot of microfracture surgery, which Steadman also pioneered.
Microfracture, which regenerates cartilage in joints by using small incisions,
was used only by about 1 percent of orthopedic surgeons worldwide in 1994. Ten
years later, that statistic was up to 85 percent, and while his clinic has
blazed the trail in performing the revolutionary technique, it was the
foundation that painstakingly validated its effectiveness and shared it with the
world.
“(Steadman) is willing to push the envelope,” says three-time overall World Cup
champion Phil Mahre, whose ankle was rebuilt by Steadman less than a year before
he won a silver medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. “They’re
willing to try new things and do new things, and it just furthers everybody’s
careers and everybody’s athletic experience, whether you’re a competitive
athlete or just an average Joe who wants to be competitive on weekends.”
Mahre, who went on to win a gold medal at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo,
has benefited from Steadman’s expertise both as an elite athlete and as a
backyard ballplayer. Mahre’s second Steadman surgery was a healing response 10
years after the man who is arguably America’s greatest ski racer of all time had
retired. He had torn his ACL playing flag football.
Degenerative arthritis, the debilitating deterioration of joint cartilage,
impacts one in three adults and more than half of everyone over the age of 65.
And his office may be plastered with tributes from his three decades of
operating on world-class athletes, but the soft-spoken and unassuming Steadman
seems sincere when he says it’s the millions of lives touched by the acceptance
and spread of microfracture surgery that bring him the most joy.
“It’s always fun to treat an elite athlete, but there’s only about a thousand of
them in the world, so there’s no way you can treat all of them anyway, and there
are millions of people who want to be athletic, so that’s really our
foundation’s focus,” Steadman says.
“That’s where we’re really going with this foundation, to help that person, and
I’m honored that high-profile people come see me, but if I’m going to be
remembered for something, I’d rather it be more on the side of the things that
the foundation is doing than being somebody’s doctor.”
Building a separate brand
The concept of a charitable research and education foundation was born in 1988
while Steadman was still based in Tahoe. It started as a mechanism for taking
the guesswork out of his practice by studying, tracking and validating various
surgical techniques. Very early on, Steadman decided none of the data the
foundation uncovered should be privileged.
“We’ve taken the path that if we come up with a good idea proven at the
foundation, then we provide that to physicians worldwide,” Steadman says. “So
frequently we adopt a technique and it helps people around the world instead of
just helping us in our practice.
“So I think that’s the thing that distinguishes us from business. If IBM comes
up with an idea, they put a screen around it, whereas if we come up with an idea
that’s good, and we’ve actually come up with some ideas that are good, it
becomes an honor for us to have other people accept our ideas in areas that we
work on.”
The foundation is one of the most highly regarded in the orthopedic community,
frequently publishing influential papers and attracting top surgeons from around
the world to its fellowship program. Ask people from far-flung places what they
know about Vail, and the first they’ll say is it’s a great place to ski, but
then, surprisingly, many will mention that famous clinic where all the athletes
go to be repaired after career-threatening injuries.
Steadman and his shoulder-and-arm-specialist partner Dr. Richard “Hawk” Hawkins
are perhaps victims of their own wild success when it comes to their public
image. Surgical consultants for the Denver Broncos, Steadman and Hawkins have
also operated on everyone from Monica Seles right after she was stabbed by a
deranged fan to Kobe Bryant the day after his notorious sexual encounter with a
local hotel worker who later accused him of rape.
So it should come as no surprise that the media tend to fixate on the famous and
that reporters’ eyes glaze over when the topic turns to cutting-edge
biomechanics research or the latest peer-reviewed article in a leading medical
journal. It’s tough then for the general public to make the distinction between
the famous for-profit clinic and a charity-funded foundation that relies largely
on the largess of donors.
“I think some people just misunderstand the clinic and the foundation,” says
Steadman. “Although they work hand in hand, the physicians don’t have any income
from the foundation, none, and we actually provide a lot of the financing for
the projects in the foundation. So we’re being philanthropic, but we’re also the
people who are coming up with a lot of the ideas that can improve people’s
athletic lifestyles.”
In addition to longstanding contributions from local benefactors such as the
Vail Valley Medical Center and Vail Resorts, organizations able to make the
distinction between the clinic and the foundation, the nonprofit organization
receives funds from past patients who are indoctrinated in the role the
foundation plays in substantiating and improving the surgical and rehabilitation
techniques used by the clinic.
Then there are the special events such as the Colorado Classic, a weekend of
dinners, wine tastings and golf at the Sonnenalp Golf Club each August that
raises about 5 percent of the foundation’s annual operating budget.
“At an event like this the money raised is going directly to the foundation;
it’s not going straight into the hands of Drs. Steadman and Hawkins at the
clinic,” says foundation board member and 11-time Steadman patient Cindy Nelson,
the first American to win a World Cup downhill (1974) and a bronze medalist at
the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. “In fact, the doctors are some
of the biggest contributors to the foundation, so it’s not like they’re trying
to line their own pockets.”
Dr. Richard Steadman relocated his practice in Vail in 1990 from the Lake Tahoe,
partly because of local support for his nonprofit research foundation.
Nelson was Steadman’s first elite athlete patient in 1972 and was later working
as the director of skiing at Vail when Steadman was considering relocating from
Tahoe. Nelson and the owner of Vail at the time, George Gillett, were
instrumental in persuading the surgeon to head east. But as a foundation board
member and former superstar patient, Nelson perhaps better than anyone
understands the challenges of differentiating the work of the foundation from
the high-profile successes of the clinic.
“Because they’ve become so famous and so expert at what they do, they’ve created
their own recognition, so that’s a good thing because it has a ring of quality
to it … but locally it sometimes has a negative impact because people think
we’re talking clinic when we’re really talking foundation. We wrestle with it on
the board all the time,” Nelson says.
“Locally, we have a need for people to understand that the foundation is not the
clinic, but that the foundation actually supports the work of doctors in the
Steadman Hawkins Clinic as well as the other orthopedic surgeons in the Vail
Valley and nationwide.”
Despite her extensive surgical history, Nelson continues to live an incredibly
active lifestyle, and she attributes it to the work of Steadman, through both
the clinic and the foundation.
“Here I am, 11 surgeries later, I’m very active. I had some bad injuries and I’m
really in the middle of my life and I want to continue to stay active … I don’t
want these injuries to become so arthritic that I become lame or I can’t do
things pain-free,” Nelson says. “I believe that the work that has been done by
this foundation … will have a great enough impact on the medical profession that
in my future I can be as active as I want to be for as long as I want to be, so
that is great for me. I feel a sense of relief.”
But Nelson is a rarity: an athlete who gets it when it comes to the foundation.
She thinks it’s critical to educate athletes on the role of the foundation so
they can become de facto spokesmen for its invaluable research and education
work. That tireless analysis led to microfracture surgery and its groundbreaking
technique of tapping into the body’s own stem cells to regenerate cartilage, but
most athletes – and the general public for that matter – don’t realize the depth
of the foundation’s critical contributions.
Miller, for example, likely does not fully grasp how the foundation helped
develop and validate healing response. He only knows that it helped get him back
on skis in time for the Olympics.
“He got a great benefit from the foundation,” Steadman says. “Ten years from now
he might be able to focus on it, but right now he’s focused on his career.”
Indeed, with age comes wisdom. Phil Mahre’s brother Steve, who finished with a
silver medal right behind his sibling at the 1984 Winter Olympics, clearly
understands the importance of the work going on at the foundation. Also an
11-time Steadman patient, he has had four microfracture surgeries.
“For me, what the foundation is doing is studying physical well-being, trying to
focus more on prevention and that side of things and get the message out to
people that this is what you have to do to prolong the joint’s health to make it
work longer for you down the road,” Steve Mahre says. “Also, they’re trying to
learn what is causing some of the injuries and how you can try to prevent them
from happening.”
Definitely not as sexy as patching up John Elway’s shoulder in time for him to
finally win two elusive Super Bowl rings late in his career. Or getting All-Pro
defensive lineman Bruce Smith back on the field for another five years so he
could set the all-time quarterback-sack record. But important work nonetheless,
particularly if you’re a weekend duffer who can’t stand the thought of not being
able to go out to try and break a hundred on the local links.
A lasting legacy
In some respects, it’s too late.
The Steadman Hawkins name will always be associated with greatness.
When you resurrect or prolong the careers of such legendary athletes as tennis
greats Martina Navratilova, Billy Jean King and Lindsay Davenport, golf
superstar Greg Norman, NFL hall-of-famer Dan Marino, singer/songwriter Judy
Collins and countless stars of every sport from skiing to baseball to hockey,
it’s bound to cement your reputation as the surgeons of the rich and famous.
Internationally, Steadman Hawkins has become synonymous with soccer, or football
as it’s known outside our borders, for the clinic’s work on such global
sensations as Ronaldo, Alessandro Del Piero, Oliver Kahn and Lothar Matthaus.
Hardly household names in the States, but only a visit by David Beckham would
garner more worldwide media attention than that quartet.
And only Vail firefighter Ryan Sutter and his wife Trista, stars of the ABC
reality TV show “The Bachelorette,” could keep Steadman Hawkins docs (the
clinic’s namesakes were not included) from taking top billing in the 2004
Undressed Calendar, a Vail Valley Charitable Fund production that raises money
(and eyebrows) with its scantily clad photo shoots.
But for all the glitz and glam of slicing and dicing celebs, the serious side of
Steadman Hawkins always finds its way to the forefront. Take, for example, a
former foundation fellow stationed at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs,
Maj. John Tokish, MD, who used his knowledge obtained at Steadman Hawkins while
commanding a Mobile Forward Surgical Team in Afghanistan, treating U.S. Special
Forces troops shortly after the invasion.
Soldiers, civilians, elite athletes or weekend warriors, everyone wants to stay
mobile and active after injuries, Steadman says. Helping people realize that
dream is what he wants as his lasting legacy.
“The more people realize that it’s not just the famous people the better,”
Steadman says. “I think there’s just as much satisfaction getting somebody back
who has had not a career-ending but a recreation- or athletics-ending injury.
“A high-profile athlete can find 20 doctors who will take care of him, and
fortunately for me, a lot of them come here … But the standard person who just
wants to stay active, they don’t have that access, so what we’re trying to do is
create that access.”
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